In the computer industry, there is a constant demand for products that are both smaller, less expensive and have higher performance. The hard disk drive used in virtually every personal computer has traditionally been one of the largest and most expensive components installed therein. Thus, disk drive manufacturers have continuously tried to decrease the size and cost of their drives while at the same time increasing the amount of mass storage provided.
As is well known in the art, any rotating memory mass storage device includes at least one disk (whether removable or fixed), a head arm assembly and read/write circuitry. As form-factors are reduced, there is a desire to reduce the size of these components. For an example of a height-reduced disk drive and head-arm assembly, see U.S. Pat. No. 5,027,241 which is hereby incorporated by reference and which is assigned to the same assignee as this application and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/198855, entitled "LOW PROFILE HEAD SUSPENSION ASSEMBLIES AND METHOD", filed of even date and assigned to the same assignee of the invention of this present application, which is hereby incorporated herein by reference. The read/write circuitry, which typically has included an integrated circuit and related components mounted on a flexible plastic film substrate, is used for electrically selecting and connecting the read/write heads to the drive read/write channel electronics and for conditioning the digital information to be written onto the disk and for pre amplifying the analog signal stream read back from the disk. Because of the need to make disk drive form-factors smaller while reducing the cost of the drive, it would be desirable to reduce the size of the flexible integrated circuit assembly and decrease the cost of assembly.